Leon Trotsky: The Transitional
programme

The Minimum Program and the Transitional Program

The strategic task of the next period—pre-revolutionary period of agitation,
propaganda and organization—consists in overcoming the contradiction between
the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the
proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older
generation, the inexperience of the younger generation).

It is necessary to help
the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between
present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should
include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's
conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class
and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the
proletariat.

Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive
capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimumprogram which limited itself to reforms within the framework of
bourgeois society, and the maximum program which promised substitution
of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and
the maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need
of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday
speechifying. The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy
in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion
of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses' living standards;
when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of
the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist
property relations and of the bourgeois state.

The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming
capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by
the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the
achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered
attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics. All sections of
the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups should be drawn into the
revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that
it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits
this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.

The Fourth International does not discard the program of the old
"minimal" demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least
part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic
rights and social conquests of the workers. But it carries on this day-to-day
work within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary
perspective. Insofar as the old, partial, "minimal" demands of the
masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent
capitalism — and this occurs at each step—the Fourth International advances
a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in
the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the
very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old "minimal program" is
superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in
systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution.